Can there be a “non class-based state”?

[robbo203]

It is a basic tenet of Marxian political theory that the state is an institutional tool of class society par excellence.  The state is the means by which a ruling class rules over society. I was intrigued therefore to come across this quote by someone called  Brian Pearce stating that  Frederich Engels himself in his Anti-Dühring, seems to have accepted “that the state arose in primitive-communist society, before any division into classes, because of the need for defence .  This rather obvious idea, claims Pearce, Engels "abandoned when he came to write The Origins of the Family, etc" (https://www.marxists.org/archive/pearce/2002/xx/asiaticmode.html)/

 

Can anyone track down what Engels is supposed to have said on the subject?

 

This whole question of the relationship between the state and class division is puzzling.  Is it a case of the chicken and egg? Which came first.  The MCH would tend to lay emphasis on the socio-economic aspect and so would incline us to think that class division preceded the emergence of the state.

 

Its partly a question of definition I suppose.  The classic liberal definition of the state as being a body that exercises a monopoly of coercive power tends to sever the connection with the basic economic structure of a given society and regard political power as some kind of disembodied phenomenon. This is echoed in the idea of "rolling back the state".  This suggests that the state as an institution has overstepped the mark and that its functions need to be pruned back – essentially to that of maintaining law and order. In other words,  the state arose essentially in response to the problem of violence, both internal and external, as the quote above suggests.

However one finds n the anthropological literature examples of stateless or acephalous societies which exhibit a considerable degree of structural violence  These are tribalistic societies not hunter gatherer groups it must be stressed.  A  classic  example is Evans Pritchard's study of the Nuer people in Sudan who were warlike, egalitarian,  individualistic – and stateless

 

https://archive.org/stream/nuerdescriptiono00evan/nuerdescriptiono00evan_djvu.txt

 

Then there is the question of the "Asiatic mode of Production"  to which Pearce's peice refers.  Some contend that this was a non class based society  albeit presided over by a god-king.  Karl Wittfogel described this kind of society as a hydraulic civilisation meaning that it arose out of technical requirements in managing a system of large scale irrigation works.  Wittfogels explanation was thus a technological determinist one rather than a class based one. In fact, the basis of the AMP was communal land ownership.

 

Comparisons have been made in the past between the AMP and the Soviet state.  However this was actively discouraged by the Soviet regime because of the unflattering suggestion that it might itself have been a kind of manifestation of "oriental despotism"

[ALB]

Your link to Pearce's article doesn't seem to work. This (hopefully) does:https://www.marxists.org/archive/pearce/2002/xx/asiaticmode.htmlI wonder if Engels was just making a point about a situation which eventually led on to the evolution of a state (as, presumably, armed bodies of men over and above the rest of society at the service of some minority)

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

Your link to Pearce's article doesn't seem to work. This (hopefully) does:https://www.marxists.org/archive/pearce/2002/xx/asiaticmode.htmlI wonder if Engels was just making a point about a situation which eventually led on to the evolution of a state (as, presumably, armed bodies of men over and above the rest of society at the service of some minority)

 Problem is, though, that this "minority" surely denotes the existence of class society so that in this formulation, it would be class division that leads to, or precedes, the state.   The classic MCH position, if you like According to Pearce, however, Engels himself seems to have accepted “that the state arose in primitive-communist society, before any division into classes, because of the need for defence .  In other words, the state preceded class division. This is the basic problem I'm referring to.  Which of these positions is correct or is it a case of both being inextricably linked and part of the same process? If so, what are the theoretical implications of this for the MCH itself and its  base-superstructure model of society?

[ALB]

It could only denote a "proto class". Anyway, I'm searching for what Engels actually did say.Here's how the section on 'The Emergence of Class Society' in Chapter 3 of our Ecology and Socialism pamphlet speculates on how class society might have arisen from another once purely technical social role, storing surpluses once agricultural evolved (rather than defence):

Quote:

The existence of a common store becomes another aspect of the society's material conditions of production and requires a social arrangement for managing this store – collecting and redistributing the surpluses. The usual arrangement seems to have been to confer this responsibility on a particular family. Arguments can go on as to whether being given this responsibility made the head of the family concerned "the chief" or whether this responsibility was conferred on a family whose head had already acquired this status for other reasons – perhaps military or religious. But the fact remains that this role of collecting and redistributing surpluses was one that had to be filled if all the members of the society were to be able to meet their basic needs as of right.The Emergence Of Class Society It is easy to imagine how over time this coordinating role in distribution could become a source of privileged consumption for the chief and his family. The duty to contribute any surplus products to the common storehouse could become a duty to contribute this to the chief, and the chief and his family could come to consume an excessive amount of the stores at the expense of redistributing them to those in need. This tendency for what was originally a necessary technical function to evolve into a social privilege would have been even more pronounced when the technical coordinating role concerned production rather than simply distribution, as was the case when large-scale irrigation works had to be managed so that agriculture could be practised. This was what happened with the agriculture that was practised, for instance, in the Nile, Euphrates and other river valleys.

[LBird]

Pre-class, the 'bodies of armed men' are the tribe in arms. There are no 'bodies of unarmed men'. All producers are warriors. All production is socially controlled.The problem starts when the 'bodies of armed men' are not the tribe in arms, but a select group, and there are bodies of unarmed producers, who produce a surplus, which can support the now unproductive 'bodies of armed men'.

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

It could only denote a "proto class". Anyway, I'm searching for what Engels actually did say.Here's how the section on 'The Emergence of Class Society' in Chapter 3 of our Ecology and Socialism pamphlet speculates on how class society might have arisen from another once purely technical social role, storing surpluses once agricultural evolved (rather than defence):

Quote:

The existence of a common store becomes another aspect of the society's material conditions of production and requires a social arrangement for managing this store – collecting and redistributing the surpluses. The usual arrangement seems to have been to confer this responsibility on a particular family. Arguments can go on as to whether being given this responsibility made the head of the family concerned "the chief" or whether this responsibility was conferred on a family whose head had already acquired this status for other reasons – perhaps military or religious. But the fact remains that this role of collecting and redistributing surpluses was one that had to be filled if all the members of the society were to be able to meet their basic needs as of right.The Emergence Of Class Society It is easy to imagine how over time this coordinating role in distribution could become a source of privileged consumption for the chief and his family. The duty to contribute any surplus products to the common storehouse could become a duty to contribute this to the chief, and the chief and his family could come to consume an excessive amount of the stores at the expense of redistributing them to those in need. This tendency for what was originally a necessary technical function to evolve into a social privilege would have been even more pronounced when the technical coordinating role concerned production rather than simply distribution, as was the case when large-scale irrigation works had to be managed so that agriculture could be practised. This was what happened with the agriculture that was practised, for instance, in the Nile, Euphrates and other river valleys.

Yes, the argument that the technical coordination of large scale irrigation  projects gave rise to the state is one that Wittfogel put forward in his account of "hydraulic civilisations" in riverine enviroments such as the ones you cite.  In this case the technical role of overssing the project evolved into a social role in which the overseers – typically a priestly caste with a knowlege of such things as astonomy – emerged as a ruling class.  At what point did the state emerge in this process of social transformation, though? Regarding the storage of food surpluses there is an interestung article here. http://www.pnas.org/content/106/27/10966.full  This paxssage is of particular interest: Third, excavations at Dhra′ indicate that the granaries were located in extramural locations between other buildings. Elsewhere Kuijt (11) argues that starting at 10,500 cal B.P. food storage starts to be located inside houses, and that by 9,500 cal B.P. dedicated storage rooms appear in Neolithic villages. These data may reflect evolving systems of ownership and property, with PPNA granaries being used and owned communally with later food storage systems becoming part of household or individual based systems. Fourth, these sophisticated storage systems with subfloor ventilation are a precocious development that precedes the emergence of almost all of the other elements of the Near Eastern Neolithic package—domestication, large-scale sedentary communities, and the entrenchment of some degree of social differentiation  Food storage is an essential development for food production, sedentism and farming, and represents a major evolutionary threshold for human civilization (12). Archaeologists have only recently started to document food storage among cultures before the appearance fully developed agro-pastoralist economies, and assess whether, when, or even if, people were able to regularly store food beyond their annual consumption needs, including banking grain to overcome spoilage, and to provide seed for planting and potential years of crop failure. In some cases storage necessitates, or is necessary for, changes in social systems, invoked both in increasing corporate activities and for the development of hierarchical structures. Storage also represents a critical form of risk management and economic intensification 

[ALB]

This must be the passage from Engels that Pearce must have been referring to:

Quote:

As men originally made their exit from the animal world—in the narrower sense of the term—so they made their entry into history: still half animal, brutal, still helpless in face of the forces of nature, still ignorant of their own strength; and consequently as poor as the animals and hardly more productive than they. There prevailed a certain equality in the conditions of existence, and for the heads of families also a kind of equality of social position—at least an absence of social classes — which continued among the primitive agricultural communities of the civilised peoples of a later period. In each such community there were from the beginning certain common interests the safeguarding of which had to be handed over to individuals, true, under the control of the community as a whole: adjudication of disputes; repression of abuse of authority by individuals; control of water supplies, especially in hot countries; and finally when conditions were still absolutely primitive, religious functions. Such offices are found in aboriginal communities of every period — in the oldest German marks and even today in India. They are naturally endowed with a certain measure of authority and are the beginnings of state power. The productive forces gradually increase; the increasing density of the population creates at one point common interests, at another conflicting interests, between the separate communities, whose grouping into larger units brings about in turn a new division of labour, the setting up of organs to safeguard common interests and combat conflicting interests. These organs which, if only because they represent the common interests of the whole group, hold a special position in relation to each individual community—in certain circumstances even one of opposition—soon make themselves still more independent, partly through heredity of functions, which comes about almost as a matter of course in a world where everything occurs spontaneously, and partly because they become increasingly indispensable owing to the growing number of conflicts with other groups. It is not necessary for us to examine here how this independence of social functions in relation to society increased with time until it developed into domination over society; how he who was originally the servant, where conditions were favourable, changed gradually into the lord; how this lord, depending on the conditions, emerged as an Oriental despot or satrap, the dynast of a Greek tribe, chieftain of a Celtic clan, and so on; to what extent he subsequently had recourse to force in the course of this transformation; and how finally the individual rulers united into a ruling class. Here we are only concerned with establishing the fact that the exercise of a social function was everywhere the basis of political supremacy; and further that political supremacy has existed for any length of time only when it discharged its social functions.

It does not quite say what Pearce says but has more in common with what our pamphlet speculates about those carrying out a technical social functions evolving into a ruling class (as well).

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

It does not quite say what Pearce says but has more in common with what our pamphlet speculates about those carrying out a technical social functions evolving into a ruling class (as well).

Yes, it doesn't quite say what Pearce says and I too cannot find anything in Engels that specifically says that the state emerged in a primitive communism prior to the division of society into classes.  This would be contrary to what one might expect from a reading of a materialist conception of history. Perhaps, if the minority you referred to earlier  at whose service "armed bodies of men over and above the rest of society" emerged,  constituted a proto class then by the same token the political set at the time would constitute a proto state but not yet a developed state based on centralised power.  At any rate I cant really see how state formation and the division of society into classes can be separated out as cause and effect.  The former surely is just the political expression of the latter and the latter, the socio economic expression of the former. All states depend upon the extraction of an economic surplus to maintain and reproduce themselves which in turn presupposes a system of class exploitation.  If so I cannot really see how the view Pearce attributes to Engels can be correct

[Anonymous]

That guy is distorting or misquoting Frederick Engels. I have read the Anti-Duhring of Engels, and he does not say that, and I does not say that on his book on Lewis Morgan either, and I do not think that  Engels would have  made  that kind of mistake,   despite all the mistakes that he made on the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.The ones who have said that the class division started within the communist society were the Marxist-Humanists, but they never have said that the state arose within the primitive society.  It is the same distortion made against the Mayas and the Incas, they only have  mentioned the period where class division started within their society, and religion was used to make human sacrifity, but they do not mention the prior historical period where they did not have any army, they lived in peace, and religion was attached to natureThose are only arguments to justify the need for a state and that mankind has always need a state, or an organ of oppression, and deny that the state has a class basisThe Essenes  were a religious community that had an army to defend against the attack of foreign forces, but they did not have a state

[robbo203]

Adam, In the same chapter of Anti Duhring from which you quote there is another passage a little further on which says this The role played in history by force as contrasted with economic development is therefore clear. In the first place, all political power is organically based on an economic, social function, and increases in proportion as the members of society, through the dissolution of the primitive community, become transformed into private producers, and thus become more and more divorced from the administrators of the common functions of society. Secondly, after the political force has made itself independent in relation to society, and has transformed itself from its servant into its master, it can work in two different directions. Either it works in the sense and in the direction of the natural economic development, in which case no conflict arises between them, the economic development being accelerated. Or it works against economic development, in which case, as a rule, with but few exceptions, force succumbs to it. These few exceptions are isolated cases of conquest, in which the more barbarian conquerors exterminated or drove out the population of a country and laid waste or allowed to go to ruin productive forces which they did not know how to use This would seem to contradict Pearce's reading of Engels.  Political power , aka the state, develops out of the "dissolution of the primitive community"

[Anonymous]

Primitive society before the advent of a currency was limited to what was called a gifting economy.  A gifting economy is maybe class based or maybe classless depending on how you understand "class".   It's an interesting myth that people bartered for goods and services before the advent of an exchange currency, but it's just a myth apparently. There's no actual examples of pre-currency civilizations engaging in barter and instead they operated on a system of patronage.  Wikipedia says more about this better than I can . . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

[robbo203]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

Primitive society before the advent of a currency was limited to what was called a gifting economy.  A gifting economy is maybe class based or maybe classless depending on how you understand "class".   It's an interesting myth that people bartered for goods and services before the advent of an exchange currency, but it's just a myth apparently. There's no actual examples of pre-currency civilizations engaging in barter and instead they operated on a system of patronage.  Wikipedia says more about this better than I can . . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

 Hi Steve David Graeber likewise rejects the idea that there was ever a barter based economy.  See his book Debt: The First 5000 years https://libcom.org/files/__Debt__The_First_5_000_Years.pdf I'm not quite sure what you mean by a gift economy  operating "on a system of patronage".  Karl Polanyi's threefold typology  springs to mind here  –  a market system, a redistributive system and a reciprocity system.  I would class a gift economy under a reciprocity system  – generalised reciprocity to be precise which is more or less what we understand  by socialism by the way "Patronage", on the other hand, seem to me fall more naturally  under the heading of a redistributive system where wealth flows inwards towards a centre eg, a tribal chief  and is redistributed outwards as a way of cementing social bonds and maintaining  loyalty and allegiance.  In other words it would be more appropriate to a tribal social formation than a hunter gatherer band society for example. But then I may have misunderstood what you mean by patronage…

[Anonymous]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

Primitive society before the advent of a currency was limited to what was called a gifting economy.  A gifting economy is maybe class based or maybe classless depending on how you understand "class".   It's an interesting myth that people bartered for goods and services before the advent of an exchange currency, but it's just a myth apparently. There's no actual examples of pre-currency civilizations engaging in barter and instead they operated on a system of patronage.  Wikipedia says more about this better than I can . . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

The Socialist Party has written several articles about the so called Gifting economy, but we view it  from a different point as it is expressed on Wikipedia ( personally I call it the blackboard ) most of their analysis are based on capitalist point of view, or influenced by the bourgeois ideologyWe are clear in our conceptions,  and we do know what a class is, we are not confused, we have not created a myth about the concept of class, or romanticize capitalism.During the period of primitive communism, social classes did not exist, it is only a  false argument created by the rulers and their intellectuals,  in order to justify the existence of class, the eternity of the social classes,  and to justify  exploitation, and to justify the idea that a minority group of exploiters exist because they work hard, they are just a bunch of thieves, like any others thieves, and that robbery takes place at the point of productions.  Classes are defined according to their relationship with the means of productionhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2012/no-1291-march-2012/book-reviews

[Anonymous]

Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:

Primitive society before the advent of a currency was limited to what was called a gifting economy.  A gifting economy is maybe class based or maybe classless depending on how you understand "class".   It's an interesting myth that people bartered for goods and services before the advent of an exchange currency, but it's just a myth apparently. There's no actual examples of pre-currency civilizations engaging in barter and instead they operated on a system of patronage.  Wikipedia says more about this better than I can . . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

A money less society, and barter,  is something that we have discussed for many years, and Marx also envision a society without money. It is a  topic that has never been widely discussed by the left wingers and the so called socialist country, because it would be like opening a can of worms,it will show that their society operates under the same law, or logic of capitalism, and that money-capital is a product of human exploitation, and it is used to  pay the salary of their own wage slaves, and the existence of the value of value of exchange, and there is not any ideological difference with the others capitalist society. There are not two different  parallel system in this worldOne of the few left wingers who publicly spoke about a money less society was Ernesto Che Guevara, but he ended up becoming the minister of Industry and Commerce and in charge of the Central Bank. Pure contradiction.There was not any patronage system  in the communist primitive society, it is just another justification of the existence of chief and leaders, that is problem that exist when we try to be informed by  using the bourgeois press, or Wikipedia. Probably, Engels book on the State is a better source  of information than Wikipediahttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2012/no-1296-august-2012/debt-money-and-marxhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1985/no-973-september-1985/marx-money-must-gohttps://www.worldsocialism.org/canada/dictwrng.htm.   Dictionaries can be wrong, the same thing  can be applicable to others sources of information

[Anonymous]

mcolome1 wrote:

A money less society, and barter,  is something that we have discussed for many years, and Marx also envision a society without money. It is a  topic that has never been widely discussed by the left wingers and the so called socialist country, because it would be like opening a can of worms,it will show that their society operates under the same law, or logic of capitalism, and that money-capital is a product of human exploitation, and it is used to  pay the salary of their own wage slaves, and the existence of the value of value of exchange, and there is not any ideological difference with the others capitalist society. There are not two different  parallel system in this world

@mcolme1,You seem very knowledgable about sources of information.  Whats your resource base for previous writers on technological determinism? I realize you don't like wikipedia, but for me it's easier to find information there so that's technology determinism driving me towards wikipedia?  wikipedia says. . . 

Quote:

"The first major elaboration of a technological determinist view of socioeconomic development came from the German philosopher and economistKarl Marx, whose theoretical framework was grounded in the perspective that changes in technology, and specifically productive technology, are the primary influence on human social relations and organizational structure, and that social relations and cultural practices ultimately revolve around the technological and economic base of a given society. Marx's position has become embedded in contemporary society, where the idea that fast-changing technologies alter human lives is all-pervasive.[1] Although many authors attribute a technologically determined view of human history to Marx's insights, not all Marxists are technological determinists, and some authors question the extent to which Marx himself was a determinist. Furthermore, there are multiple forms of technological determinism.. . . Some interpret Karl Marx as advocating technological determinism, with such statements as "The Handmill gives you society with the feudal lord: the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist" (The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847), but others argue that Marx was not a determinist.  "

and the original posters comment .

Quote:

Then there is the question of the "Asiatic mode of Production"  to which Pearce's peice refers.  Some contend that this was a non class based society  albeit presided over by a god-king.  Karl Wittfogel described this kind of society as a hydraulic civilisation meaning that it arose out of technical requirements in managing a system of large scale irrigation works.  Wittfogels explanation was thus a technological determinist one rather than a class based one. In fact, the basis of the AMP was communal land ownership.

Do you dismiss technological determinism completly?  if not, could it be a some possible technology or group of technologies are more conducive to the rise of a socialist society?  is there any speculation on what technology combination or requirements would be or would exist for a socialist society. I could probably find some TED talk or something speculating on the information age and the rise of open source technologies creating a classless society (in open source development all contributors are equal).  But I get the feeling you would say it has nothing to do with socialism.  So I think only a source you already trust and find yourself would be acceptable for you to consider anything other than a political class struggle hard fought with determination and uncompromising hardship.  p.s no survery this time. I think they just piss you off. AND, I'm not going to try pushing the mule and argue further for a conclusion since I think you already know mine. 

[Author]

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